Cameron, Putin meet over Syria crisis

BRITISH Prime Minister David Cameron has arrived in the Black Sea resort of Sochi for talks on Syria with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid a new international push to find a way to end the two-year civil war.

"The Syrian problem will be discussed," said Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, adding bilateral issues would also be on the agenda.

Cameron flew to Putin's palm-dotted residence on the Black Sea before the British premier's planned meeting with US President Barack Obama at the White House on Monday.

"There's an urgent need to start a proper negotiation to force a political transition and to bring this conflict to an end," Cameron told the House of Commons.

The war has cost an estimated 70,000 lives and displaced millions of people, including hundreds of thousands who have fled to neighbouring countries.

"There is a growing body of limited but persuasive information showing that the regime has used and continues to use chemical weapons including sarin, and the room for doubt about this continues to diminish," Cameron said.

His high-profile visit is part of frantic diplomatic efforts to bring the warring sides in Syria to the negotiating table amid claims of the use of chemical weapons and increasing fears that the conflict would spill over Syria's borders.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has told an American television channel he believes Syria has used chemical weapons, crossing a "red line" set out by US President Barack Obama.

"It is clear the regime has used chemical weapons and missiles," Erdogan told NBC News on Thursday, without providing details on when or where they were used.

"It has been passed (a) long time ago," Erdogan said of Obama's "red line," calling for stronger US action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"We want the United States to assume more responsibilities and take further steps. And what sort of steps they will take, we are going to talk about this," said Erdogan, who will meet Obama on May 16.

Erdogan said Syrian patients showing signs of chemical attacks had been brought to hospitals across the border in Turkey, and that "remainders of missiles" that he believes were used in such attacks have been found.

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay on Friday called for urgent international action to halt the bloodshed in Syria following reports of recent massacres carried out by Syrian troops and their allies.

Several reported mass killings in and around the Mediterranean Syrian city of Banias "should spur the international community to act to find a solution to the conflict, and to ensure those responsible for serious human rights violations are made to account for their crimes", the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement.

Rights monitors say at least 62 civilians, including 14 children, were killed in an assault on a Sunni neighbourhood of Banias earlier this month, after at least 50 people were killed in the nearby village of Bayda.

"I am appalled at the apparent killing of women, children and men in the village of al-Bayda, and possibly elsewhere in the Banias area, which seem to indicate a campaign targeting specific communities perceived to be supportive of the opposition," Pillay said.

The talks with Putin come amid concerns that Russia may be preparing to sell Syria sophisticated surface-to-air missiles which will significantly strengthen its defences and complicate any foreign intervention.

US Secretary of State John Kerry warned that any such sale would be "potentially destabilising" for the region.

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